Month: November 2016

Two years ago I spent thanksgiving (although during Canadian thanksgiving in October) in Kelowna, BC. The trip showed me how different the climate is in the interior of BC compared to the coast. We of course still managed to go out and find some picturesque spots on a small trail just near the city, not a hike up the mountain just a trail through some lower-growth trees and bush along a stream.

I especially enjoy this last one. It was an interesting spot on the trail where the water became especially calm. The scene with the bright white tree and fallen tree was intriguing to me for some reason.

More black and white photography from Vancouver (old photos from when it was sunny outside).

There are a few things that I like about black and white photography for scenery-type photos. In these photos below I especially like the intensity of the tree trunk shadows. In the colour version of these pictures the colours – particularly the greens of the leaves and grass – are bright and colourful, but doesn’t have a real focal point for the pictures. The black and white filter changes the outlook completely. Rather than quickly look at the pictures and view them as just another summer day shot, I find myself looking further into what each picture holds. It starts with the dark areas of the trees, then moves to the people, then to the buildings in the background. Regardless, I hope you enjoy these shots from Kits Beach park in Vancouver.

The dark never-ending overcast with periodic rain season has begun in Vancouver #Raincouver.

To put a positive spin on the dreary weather and to finally start sharing my hiking photos on this blog, I wanted to share an unorthodox piece of hiking photography. Usually hiking photos display fantastic views and wonderful colourful colours, but there are still some inspiring photography opportunities on the days when you accidentally go hiking on a cloudy day and walk by a mountain-top lake in the fog.

The photo above is filtered for black and white only, not that the original image had very much colour to begin with, to emphasize the fog a little more.

This was from the eagle bluffs hike on Cypress mountain earlier this year. On a sunny day this hike will have one of the best views of Vancouver.

As a biologist, the challenge of finding an image to match the prompt ‘tiny’ goes to one topic: microscopy.

The first image below is a microscope image of cells with normal lighting (a little darker actually than most microscopy). Then next below that is when the lights in the microscope room are turned off, we shine a particular wavelength of light on the cells, and they become fluorescent! If you compare the images you will find that these are indeed the same cells and that the images are taken just seconds apart. We have engineered the cells to produce a fluorescent protein, which makes them incredibly useful for many scientific pruposes.

I’m a little late on the Weekly Photo Challenge from last Friday where the prompt was “Chaos”, but I wanted to weigh in none the less. I found that many of the photos put forward followed a theme of disorganization as the interpretation of ‘chaos’, which I agree is a fair component of chaos. However, I was much more impressed with the images that managed to capture action or movement such as the horse stampede. Combining the components of disorganization and action provided a sense of urgency, that I felt added to the chaos of the imagery.

While I do not have many chaotic photos, I can share an example of an image that shows action. Like the horse stampede photo there are many people feeling a sense of urgency in the photo, and your eyes dart to each side of the photo to take in which way each person is headed.

This photo is an old picture from one of my grade 12 football games. In this instance I am #5, the one on the right.

Great ‘Longreads’ post about Canada from Aaron Gilbreath (link at the bottom). This story resonated with me for a couple of reasons. I’ve lived in two different parts of Canada – roughly 3200 km (~2000 miles) apart – and also had the opportunity to meet Canadians from all parts of this country. I think the description of Canada as a ‘collection of outposts’ is fitting because it does seem odd to camaraderie with people who are thousands of kilometres away, living in environments that look completely foreign, with nothing (but beautiful natural landscape) in between. That said, I don’t think this is a description completely unique to Canada.

Second, I find stories of American perspectives on Canada interesting because it interesting to see what they learn first, what they think interesting, and what they think is the same. Aaron’s post is correct, that Canadian politics is not 100% progressive and environmentally friendly – we did indeed have a conservative party prime minister for nearly the past decade.

Overall, thanks to Aaron for sharing this perspective on his relationship with Canada!

Canada seemed like the perfect country: scenic, peaceful, friendly, progressive. But the country has its dark sides too.